Business and book website: wordwhisperer.net
Author of SETTLE FOR BEST: SATISFY THE WINNER YOU WERE BORN TO BE; SERVAL SON: SPOTS & STRIPES FOREVER; DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES; FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD; LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE(order at Amazon); and THE ENDURING LEGACY OF DeFOREST KELLEY(order at http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=382995)

Monday, January 20, 2014

Today would have been DeForest Kelley's94th birthday. Wow! Unhappily for the rest of us, he didn't live to see his 80th roll around. But every year, reliably, I get notes, Facebook messages and other communications from stalwart fans of De's (Carl Rylander, John Bowersox, Marge Duff, Jim Westbrook and others) to remind me that they haven't forgotten him. I hope he's looking down and seeing how much love millions of people still have for him. He once said in an interview with Dan Madsen, "There's nothing deader than a dead actor. I sometimes wonder if they will remember me!" (To which I retorted in print something like (paraphrasing here), "They'll remember you, Mr. Kelley. They'll remember you!" And this was before I reconnected with him again in 1988 and began the amazing journey that ended up with me becoming his personal assistant and caregiver at the end of his life.

DeForest Kelley is ever-present in lots of people's minds--and for all the right reasons. He wasn't 'just' an actor--he was an earth angel with a terrific sense of humor, immense compassion for others, and a smile and blue eyes that lit up the world. Yes, he was a helluva actor. But he was a by-far even-better human being.

At his memorial service at Paramount, I said, "DeForest Kelley was the kind of man God had in mind when he created Adam. If this sad old world was more heavily-populated with DeForest Kelley types, it would be the paradise we all wish it was." He loved God (without being preachy in the least) and loved his neighbor as himself. (With a preacher as a father, he was well-grounded in theology, but not made proud or arrogant or holier-than-thou by it.) He believed in social justice. Everyone who knew him or even just saw him from a stage at a convention felt "beloved".He was the rarest of all human beingsand he did have a ministry: it was all of us who remember him on this day with affection and the yearning to tell him, once again, "Happy Birthday. De!"!

Sunday, January 12, 2014

For those of you who have been following me on this site, please know that most of my blog posts from now on will be at wordwhisperer.net. I will continue to post Star Trek and DeForest Kelley-related things here, of course, but nearly everything else will be at wordwhisperer.net, my business website.And for those of you looking for a reputable, conscientious, pro-active WordPress web designer, please connect with Lisa Twining Taylor at tacomacomputertutor.com. She created my new website at wordwhisperer.net and has various examples of additional smoking-looking websites on her site. I highly recommend her!

About Me

A
Pacific Northwest native, Kristine M. Smith transformed her copywriting
business from a struggling start-up to a going concern in near-record time.
Prior to launching her own copywriting business, Kris served as a fledgling copywriter
for a local on-hold script production company, where she won Employee of the
Quarter the last two quarters she worked there.

Kris’s
freelance writing career was launched by actor DeForest Kelley more than forty
years ago. It was Kelley and his wife Carolyn who encouraged Kris to try
Hollywood on for size, which she did from 1989 to 2003. Kris served as Mr.
Kelley’s personal assistant and caregiver during the final months of his life
and presented heartfelt sentiments about her mentor at Paramount Studios'
memorial service for him in 1999. She has written two books about him: DeForest
Kelley: A Harvest of Memories and The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley:
Actor, Healer, Friend. An enhanced version of Harvest with a new title and 50+ pages of riotous additional anecdotes will debut during Star Trek's 50th Anniversary in 2016.

In
Hollywood, Kris served as an administrative assistant and secretarial floater
to writers, producers and—later—information technology professionals at various
studios. Most of her Hollywood career was spent at Warner Bros. Studios in
Burbank where she served as an executive secretary for the VP of Software
Development and as a Hardware Lease Administrator. Kris’s most notable creative
endeavor at Warner Bros. was writing the copy for an intranet website to help
newly-arrived secretaries learn the ins and outs of serving on the WB campus in
record time. The website earned her a monetary reward and the coveted (don’t
laugh!) Carrot Award (Bugs Bunny runs da joint, ya know!); the accompanying Certification
of Appreciation was co-signed by the head of the Human Resources Department and
her boss.

The
author of seven books, Kris’s sixth title, Serval Son: Spots and Stripes Forever
(You are responsible for all you tame)—a cautionary true story about what it’s
like to own, and be owned by, a wild cat for seventeen years—reached the #2 and
#4 spots at Amazon in two niche categories when it debuted in September 2011.

Kris’s
newest title, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be, is a chapter-by-chapter
breakdown of the twenty commonalities of millionaire philanthropists as
discerned by Napoleon Hill in his seminal 20th century work, Think
and Grow Rich. Each chapter contains words of encouragement and
instructions to entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to leave a business,
personal, or family legacy that will resonate for generations to come. Settle
for Best stood at #1 in the Motivational Self-Help category at Amazon for three
days when it debuted.